This afternoon I came across these gorgeous shots in the Harper Leiper Collection at the HMRC, taken across the top of the Tidelands Motel and over the entire southwest side of campus in January, 1959. I’ve never seen images from this angle, or anything close to it, before:
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This is a great view of the University and Main area–note Bill Williams’ Chicken House at bottom left. The Tidelands itself, I have to admit, looks pretty sweet.
Here’s another taken probably less than a minute later:
It gives a clearer view of some sort of trenching taking place along the end of the old stadium. I don’t know what that was all about but if I had to guess I’d say it had something to do with a drainage problem. There’s a reasonable chance the answer is still somewhere in the archives.
Bonus: There are stacks of customs declarations in the Tsanoff papers, all of them for books.
Taken from the original Methodist hospital?
No, it was taken from a helicopter. Rice for some reason wanted an aerial shot of the Tidelands and hired Harper Leiper to do it.
Tidelands opened in the fall of 1958. Architect was Winfred O. Gustafson from Austin, who designed other big mod motels in other cities. Wow, cars leaked a lot more oil into the parking lots back then.